


The Luckiest Girl in the World

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex Work, Notes inside, Pre-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, not really sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: A young Madame Tracy gets into an unhealthy relationship with Famine.(TW: Eating disorder)
Relationships: Madame Tracy/Famine
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	The Luckiest Girl in the World

**Author's Note:**

> OK so I wrote this during my rarepair spree so I thought I'd post it, but it's not light-hearted and fun like most of the others so I'm not gonna put it in the collection. I pulled the pairing from a generator and when I went to write it, it... got a bit weird.
> 
> TW: Tracy is very literally in a relationship with Famine but she's also figuratively in a relationship with Famine and therefore her attitude to food in this is not good. There are also some food mentions. Please look after yourself and don't read this if it's likely to cause you any problems!

Marjorie Potts stood in the harsh, intermittent light of a flickering fluorescent bulb and regarded her reflection critically. It had been two years since she'd last seen her mother, and yet her voice echoed in Marjorie's head every time she looked in the mirror.

"Time's running out, Margie, you've got to get yourself settled down soon and you won't do it looking like that!" She turned sideways and grimaced. She'd always been rather proud of her figure, fortunate enough to be curvy in all the places men liked best and slim in the places they preferred that. Now, though, somehow, she was beginning to fill out. It was impressive, in its way, she supposed; heaven knew she hadn't had enough to eat in the first year or so after her abrupt departure from her childhood home, wasting away almost to nothing before she'd managed to find her feet. More accurately, she'd discovered how to use them - and various other parts - to her monetary advantage. She had become Tracy, a young woman with assets and the courage to use them, a far cry from little Margie and her timid ways.

She'd never been timid with boys, of course, and now at twenty she was equally confident around men. It helped that so many of them were easy to read, easy to please, and easy to manipulate. She had her clients wrapped around her little finger and even, on occasion, quite literally crushed beneath her heel. And they loved her for it.

She shook herself out of her thoughts and focused once more on the reflection in the mirror. Tracy, a working girl with a whole world ahead of her, if she could only scrape together a little more money than she spent on rent and food each month. If she could save up enough, she could go somewhere far from here. The other side of London, maybe, or even the seaside. She could start again, somewhere she wouldn't have to worry about whether her next appointment might be with one of her dad's friends. She could be free.

Behind her, a tall, gaunt man emerged from one of the cubicles.

"This is the ladies'," she told him crossly, and he quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Is it?" He looked her up and down, eyes lingering on her chest, then her hips, and raking back up to her waist. She knew that look, or something like it. "Are you a lady, then?"

"I'm whatever you want me to be," she answered, with a flirtatious giggle, and he moved closer, turning her to face the mirror once more.

"I want you to be," he whispered, _"thinner."_

He turned her head and pressed a bruising kiss to her lips, then left without another word.

Marjorie Potts looked into the mirror and sighed. If she skipped lunch, she could put what she saved aside and she'd be that much closer to a little flat on the edge of a nice borough.

And outside the dilapidated toilet block, Famine smiled.

* * *

Tracy spent six months in bed with Famine.

Oh, not all the time - he had business to attend to, and she had clients - but she would spend a few hours with him here and there, and his presence helped her to forget the pit at the bottom of her stomach, hollow and hungry. When he was around, she wanted only him, his eyes on her eyes and his lips on her lips, hands roaming over her body.

“Getting a little plump,” he murmured into her ear, even as he used his hand on her backside to haul her closer. Or, “been cheating on the diet?” as he ran a thumb down the slope of her breasts.

“I’d never cheat,” she whispered, and then when he was gone, she would curl up on her bed and dream of food - chocolate and ice cream and chips, yes, but also chicken and potatoes and ripe, juicy fruits - until at last she could bear it no longer and had to eat.

Famine always seemed disappointed in her, after that.

He would scold her, the next time he visited, and she would promise to do better. She would promise to be thinner, to eat less, to starve herself away to nothing if he would only keep looking at her the way he did, as if she was a goddess, as if she was the most beautiful creature in creation. And he did; he held her as if her stick-thin limbs might snap, and whispered sweet poison in her ear, and made her feel as though she was the luckiest girl in the world to get to share his bed.

And then, one day, she saw him talking to her friend Heather on a street corner in the rain. Heather’s hair was plastered to her face, her clothes soaked through and hanging from her skeletal frame. She looked half a heartbeat away from death. And she was smiling, smiling at Famine as if... 

As if she was the luckiest girl in the world.

The next time Famine called on her, Tracy was just finishing her lunch. All the major food groups were represented, some of them twice, and she had eaten her fill. She had felt the life return to her with every mouthful, felt herself grow stronger until she was more than ready for the knock at the door.

She slid the chain into its track and opened the door just an inch.

“You’re not welcome here any more,” she told him firmly, “and if you ever felt anything for me at all, you’ll leave Heather alone, too.”

“What’s wrong?” He tried to reach through and unhook the chain, but Tracy wouldn’t budge. “Don’t you want to be perfect? Don’t you want to be _thin?”_

“I _am_ perfect,” she told him, “and I’m _hungry_. Don’t come here again.”

Six months later, she was signing the lease on a run-down flat, just across the hall from a young man who’d recently been released from prison, and she hadn’t compromised on her food budget in a long time. In fact, Tracy never went hungry again.

And when, years later, she stood on the tarmac of an old airbase and watched Famine taste defeat at the hands of a young boy, she couldn’t help but smile.


End file.
